- 1 day ago
Renowned cryptographer and early bitcoin pioneer Adam Back, whose work inspired the cryptocurrency’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, lays out his plan to bring bitcoin to Wall Street through his new digital asset treasury company and explains why the corporate bitcoin trend is just getting started.
0:00 Introduction of Dr. Adam Back
0:36 The Three Phases of Bitcoin Adoption
2:53 Viewing Bitcoin's Rapid Adoption Curve
4:10 Bitcoin as Apolitical Money
5:59 Government Adoption of Bitcoin as a Reserve Asset
9:04 The Sustainability of the Bitcoin Treasury Trend
13:57 Balancing Roles at Blockstream and Bitcoin Standard Treasury
15:35 Bitcoin Standard Treasury's Differentiators and Fundraise
17:14 The Importance of Scale for Bitcoin Standard Treasury
18:52 Why Every Company May Become a Bitcoin Treasury Company
21:28 Industry Changes Needed for Mass Bitcoin Adoption
24:12 The Shifting Role of the Technologist
25:57 Thoughts on Stablecoins
28:03 How Stablecoins Fit with Bitcoin's Future
29:06 Bitcoin's Growing Robustness and Financial Integration
31:08 Short-Term Bitcoin Predictions
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0:00 Introduction of Dr. Adam Back
0:36 The Three Phases of Bitcoin Adoption
2:53 Viewing Bitcoin's Rapid Adoption Curve
4:10 Bitcoin as Apolitical Money
5:59 Government Adoption of Bitcoin as a Reserve Asset
9:04 The Sustainability of the Bitcoin Treasury Trend
13:57 Balancing Roles at Blockstream and Bitcoin Standard Treasury
15:35 Bitcoin Standard Treasury's Differentiators and Fundraise
17:14 The Importance of Scale for Bitcoin Standard Treasury
18:52 Why Every Company May Become a Bitcoin Treasury Company
21:28 Industry Changes Needed for Mass Bitcoin Adoption
24:12 The Shifting Role of the Technologist
25:57 Thoughts on Stablecoins
28:03 How Stablecoins Fit with Bitcoin's Future
29:06 Bitcoin's Growing Robustness and Financial Integration
31:08 Short-Term Bitcoin Predictions
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
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More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Nina Bambushiva covering crypto here at Forbes. Today with me is Dr. Adam Back,
00:09who is best known as the founder of Hashcash, the proof of work algorithm cited by Satoshi Nakamoto
00:15in the Bitcoin white paper, and also co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, Bitcoin development company.
00:21You are also about to lead what will be one of the largest Bitcoin treasury companies that is
00:28going public with backing from Cantor Fitzgerald. It's great to have you here with us today, Adam.
00:34Well, thanks for having me on.
00:36Yeah. So we are 17 years into the Bitcoin era. Bitcoin is now trading well over $100,000.
00:45It has been announced as part of the Bitcoin strategic reserve by the U.S. government.
00:51We've seen a wave of dozens of companies, if not hundreds, adopted as a treasury asset.
00:58So I'm curious, how do you view the political, economic and social reality of Bitcoin today?
01:06Yeah. I mean, I think it's gone through sort of three different phases.
01:11The first wave was the early adopters, people who would buy Bitcoin on Bitcoin exchanges.
01:19Once there were Bitcoin exchanges, that's a period where there were none.
01:22And then the second wave was basically the ETFs.
01:28So, of course, there have been ETPs and ETNs in different countries, but it took a while to get the spot ETF approvals in the U.S.
01:36And so with BlackRock and the other providers, Fidelity and so on, that provided access to a different group of people.
01:43So people who interact with savings and investments through a broker or a financial advisor or an online platform for share trading are then more easily able to interact with Bitcoin or buy Bitcoin.
01:56So apparently about 30 percent of the money in the BlackRock ETF is institutional.
02:03But the other two thirds, so the bulk of it is actually, you know, individual savers in the U.S.
02:09And then the third wave is the treasury companies and the institutional buyers.
02:16So companies that are using Bitcoin as a treasury asset and really just to protect their cash reserves as an operating company from inflation, effectively.
02:30And the institutional adoption goes along with that, which is, you know, the early pension funds, buying Bitcoin, some sovereign wealth funds, the Swiss National Bank buying treasury companies that are themselves buying Bitcoin.
02:43So you've got all these indirect effects and some ETFs that are sort of more strategy ETFs on top of Bitcoin treasury companies or on top of Bitcoin.
02:52Is everything, the adoption curve going faster, slower or about the same as you expected?
03:01Yeah, I think much faster.
03:03Now, of course, you know, in the if people look day to day, they don't feel the speed.
03:08But certainly the case that five years ago, nobody would have anticipated institutional buying, even sovereigns and governments, a few governments that are directly buying Bitcoin or directly mining Bitcoin with national energy reserves.
03:26And, you know, going back a bit before that, there was a period where no financial institutions were interested.
03:32Blockstream started in 2014, and at that time, the banks generally didn't want to know about Bitcoin.
03:42But after already a few years, effectively, almost every major financial institution had their own blockchain R&D lab, but they wanted to talk about blockchain, not Bitcoin.
03:54And then that swung. Now they want to talk about Bitcoin, the asset class.
03:58They want to provide, you know, financial services, access and put model portfolios together to put Bitcoin or Bitcoin ETFs into their general portfolio recommendations.
04:10Yeah, the floodgates have opened.
04:12Is there something that concerns you?
04:15For example, there are voices who worry about the politicization of Bitcoin when the Bitcoin strategic reserve was announced, for instance.
04:26How did you welcome that announcement?
04:28Well, I mean, while the current administration has, you know, brought in a more open for business regime in the U.S., which I think will continue afterwards because there are many big financial institutions that have,
04:39you know, built long term plans and have very large investor money in such products, I think ultimately Bitcoin is apolitical money.
04:50It's perhaps in the same general class as gold, right, where it's not affiliated with any politics or era or religion, and it's been around for thousands of years.
04:59So I think effectively what humans have done through the ages is find the best money technology they can.
05:08And there were things before gold that were inferior.
05:11Gold was discovered and adopted, exactly how lost in the history.
05:16But I think effectively Bitcoin is a better store of value technology, a better monetary technology, a hard money.
05:22So kind of like a commodity money is the close analogy perhaps.
05:25And so I think that is the, you know, the direction to look at it as apolitical money that people from all across the spectrum, from different cultures or, you know, political leanings will all be buying Bitcoin.
05:42So, I mean, some people will even say Bitcoin is for enemies, right?
05:46It's not about a group of friends buying it, it's about everybody buying it.
05:50And that was always the case with gold, you know, different countries that might be at war with each other even are building gold reserves or drawing on their gold reserves and so on.
05:59Yeah, yeah.
06:00Well, at the same time, we have heard expectations when the U.S. announced the strategic reserve that other governments will follow suit.
06:10And I think since then there have been a couple of announcements, I think from Pakistan, that they are also putting Bitcoin as part of their strategic reserve.
06:21So, is it that apolitical?
06:25I mean, I think it's really just looking at it from an asset perspective and its past performance and the potential for continued adoption.
06:34So, countries have gold reserves and, you know, some countries have depleted them.
06:40That generally hasn't worked out well over the long term.
06:42But now the concept of diversifying that position to also have a Bitcoin component to a national reserve is coming into play.
06:56You can see, because not all countries have, you know, a sovereign wealth fund or that many kind of long term state savings assets.
07:05But of those that do, like the Middle East, like Abu Dhabi, some of those sovereign wealth funds have got direct Bitcoin exposure.
07:13The Swiss National Bank has a 1% allocation of its share.
07:18I mean, it has invested in many things, but of its share allocations, I believe 1% of that about is in MicroStrategy, which of course is, you know, an actively managed Bitcoin position in itself.
07:29So, I think you're seeing it happen in different countries and I think the U.S. improved regulatory environment has actually encouraged more countries to approve access to Bitcoin products through, you know, tax advantaged accounts to open the regulatory gates for financial institutions to offer Bitcoin products to their clients.
07:55So, while it's been the case for many years that individuals in most countries have been able to buy Bitcoin for a Bitcoin exchange, in many countries it's been difficult to buy it in an ETF because there was no approved ETF or even the overseas ETFs were precluded from use.
08:12And that was the case in, for example, the UK, which has been quite slow.
08:16And even the UK FCA is now apparently on track to approve Bitcoin ETFs next month, so October 2025.
08:24So, we'll see how that develops.
08:27And certainly what had been happening in some of the countries that didn't have Bitcoin ETF approval is they would buy proxies of Bitcoin.
08:35So, they would buy public company shares.
08:39MicroStrategy being the earliest, it no doubt benefited from that effect.
08:42And there are, you know, sometimes domestic advantages to buying a Bitcoin treasury company share in France or in Sweden and so on.
08:55And so, you see that.
08:56And in Japan as well, there's a very big difference in the way that Bitcoin as an asset was taxed compared to shares and ETFs.
09:03And ultimately, everybody worries about inflation.
09:08And this is why you mentioned we see a wave of companies adopting the Bitcoin standard.
09:14But also, you mentioned MicroStrategy.
09:17Everybody has seen their incredible performance and some of the other copycats.
09:21You are also about to launch Bitcoin treasury company.
09:29So, I guess you are a believer of the trend.
09:32But for many people, the only question is, how long will the music last?
09:36How sustainable is this?
09:38So, what are your thoughts?
09:40Yeah, I mean, I was a relatively early, like, individual investor in MicroStrategy.
09:47And the way I think about it, you can see how their thinking evolved because they were very transparent about their thought process through that period and today as well.
09:58And really, it was during the COVID era where there was a lot of quantitative easing.
10:03And Michael Saylor, as the CEO at that time, was concerned about the effects of inflation on the spending power of their $500 million cash reserves.
10:14And so, you know, talking through with a friend of his who's a fund manager, Eric Weiss, try to think of some strategy, you know, buy real estate, buy gold.
10:24What could the company do to preserve the spending power?
10:27And that's where they settled on Bitcoin.
10:29So, you can see it's a kind of defensive move.
10:31I've also said another way to look at it is effectively given the past decade performance or the rolling performance over, you know, six-year periods over the last 15 years,
10:43that Bitcoin has really been the outlier asset class that's outperformed most things, had a very good sharp ratio.
10:53And so, effectively, Bitcoin is the hurdle rate, if you like.
10:56So, normally, with a hedge fund, you might negotiate a hurdle rate, which is the prime rate or the government treasury rate of return.
11:06So, I'm saying, actually, that Bitcoin should be the hurdle rate for long-term investing or long-term value preservation.
11:12So, if you can't outperform Bitcoin with a strategy, my argument is maybe you should just buy Bitcoin with an allocation.
11:22And so, you can see that the companies that are doing it are benefiting not just from the inflation protection, but the long-term performance curve,
11:31which is, of course, most closely correlated with Bitcoin adoption, because it's still early stage.
11:40And with a treasury company, they're an actively managed vehicle.
11:45So, unlike an ETF, which can really only hold the asset by mandate and has its management overhead, so annually small fees coming off,
11:55with a treasury company, they can use capital markets access to increase the Bitcoin per share over time,
12:03so that it's, you know, the objective of those companies is to increase Bitcoin per share.
12:08So, they have been able to maintain and develop what's been called an MNAV,
12:15so that the market cap multiple above the net asset value of the Bitcoin, so multiple of NAV.
12:24And that's basically because people are looking at it a bit like a P-E ratio in a sector,
12:31what is the past MNAV and the other metrics, you know, how fast are they increasing Bitcoin per share,
12:36how large are they, you know, how many Bitcoin do they have, what's the track record,
12:41how good are their execution to keep the corporate actions going.
12:47And in the case of Bitcoin Stranger Treasury, which is the company that I'm working on,
12:53we have also an active mandate where we will look to deliver returns on the Bitcoin.
13:01Most of the treasury companies are actually cold storing, passively storing the Bitcoin,
13:06in an institutional custodian or something like that,
13:10whereas we see that there is opportunity to create a return on Bitcoin.
13:16The CIO of the company, Sean Bill, actually is a, you know, several decade hedge fund veteran
13:21and also spent a decade in pension funds and actually was the CIO of the first pension fund
13:28to put Bitcoin on the balance sheet with coincidentally a similar allocation recommendation
13:35for Bitcoin to the pension fund that BlackRock has now delivered in its model portfolio.
13:41So BlackRock has said 2% at the time, Sean was saying 1% to 3%.
13:47This was in 2017 and it took a few years to get that through the process, so 2019.
13:57So you were thinking about it for a while because a few months ago, I remember,
14:02we talked about launching return strategies on Bitcoin at Blockstream.
14:08So how are you now balancing your work with Blockstream and the Bitcoin Standard Treasury company?
14:15Yeah, so I'm CEO of both companies.
14:18Sean Bill's the CIO at Bitcoin Standard Treasury.
14:21And Blockstream is primarily a technology company.
14:25We have technology to support securities on Bitcoin layer 2 called Liquid.
14:33So there are on there about 4 billion different kinds of real-world assets,
14:38including topically tokenized treasury company shares for today, MicroStrategy and MetaPlanet.
14:49So those are tradable 24 by 7 priced in Bitcoin.
14:52So unlike, you know, the different markets in different time zones priced in dollars or yen
14:58and with inconvenient time zones sometimes or hard-to-access markets,
15:02it gives sort of a different market access and the Bitcoin pricing.
15:07So that's using, you know, the Liquid Network was a technology built by Blockstream.
15:11There are a number of other types of assets on there from different providers.
15:16And with Bitcoin Standard Treasury, we are looking to bring to market inside the company
15:23the active strategies to derive a real yield from Bitcoin and also some hedged multi-strat strategies as well.
15:35So I guess that is the differentiator for you.
15:39But any other things that would define your company as a standout in the saturated market?
15:47Yeah. So, I mean, I think we were very pleased with the fundraiser result.
15:52It was completed in 36-day period, so very compressed.
15:56And we were able to raise about twice as much as the largest runner-up in terms of the Wall Street capital,
16:07like the institutional capital coming in.
16:09So about 1.3 billion.
16:10Was it 21 capital?
16:11So 21, I'm not sure exactly who's the runner-up, but they were another large one.
16:16We were able to raise about 1.3 billion between the different types of instrument,
16:23the equity pipe, uniquely and the first in the U.S., a Bitcoin-denominated equity pipe in addition,
16:30which brought in 5,000 Bitcoin and also convertible notes.
16:36And another first, a perpetual preferred, so a convertible perpetual preferred,
16:42which is sort of similar to strike that MicroStrategy, you know, got to after many years in the market.
16:49We were able to bring one of those and place that during the initial kind of SPAC-related raise process, right?
16:57So at this point, we are, you know, awaiting regulator approval.
17:02So we'll have to see when that happens.
17:03The underlying ticker is SIPO, and the proposed ticker post-business combination agreement is BSTR,
17:12Bitcoin Standard Treasury.
17:14If I remember correctly, what was announced was that at launch, you'll have at least 30,000 Bitcoin.
17:22So clearly, you view scale as an important factor.
17:27Is it a primary factor of success, do you think?
17:31Kind of go big or not do it at all?
17:35Well, I think the, you know, one differentiator for BSTR is that we were, most of the capital was Bitcoin.
17:44So there's 25,000 Bitcoin in the BSTR NUCO, which is proposed to merge with the SPAC.
17:51And then the different kinds of pipes, converts coming in as well.
17:58And so roughly two-thirds of the capital was Bitcoin.
18:02So many of the treasury companies come to Wall Street, raise capital, buy Bitcoin, and then, you know, try to market and operate that company.
18:11Whereas we were coming to Wall Street with, you know, 25,000 Bitcoin plus 5,000 Bitcoin from the ecosystem, significantly Bitcoin individuals.
18:20And then, you know, adding institutional capital to that.
18:28So it's a kind of different balance, different combination.
18:32It's bringing Bitcoin to Wall Street rather than taking money from Wall Street to operate a Bitcoin strategy.
18:38So with that, we hope to have out of the gate more Bitcoin-centric investors, for example, than the other companies.
18:45So a different investor base.
18:46Of course, also a number of blue chip and quite interesting institutional investors in there as well.
18:52Yeah, Cantor is your partner on the SPAC.
18:56And they have been incredibly active recently in this space.
19:00Also, you said in one of your recent interviews that you think every company will ultimately be a Bitcoin treasury company.
19:09How so?
19:10And is it a good thing?
19:12Well, I think that as Bitcoin undergoes adoption and, you know, as I've been saying that Bitcoin is the hurdle rate.
19:20So if a business or investment fund can't outperform Bitcoin, and statistically that's generally been the case for most alternative investments for the last decade,
19:31then if Bitcoin is the hurdle rate, the only way to compete with that is to internalize it, i.e. to run your company on Bitcoin, to hold Bitcoin as a reserve,
19:41operate the business, buy more Bitcoin, reinvest in the core business, buy Bitcoin with the excess revenue, and operate on that basis.
19:51So, I think another question people will ask is, you know, will this get saturated?
19:56How scalable is this market?
19:58And I think ultimately the potential addressable market for Bitcoin is enormous because it's the sort of cash and monetary premium assets in the world.
20:11So, potentially, the bond market, the stock market you can see is, in the last period, quite correlated with M2 monetary expansion.
20:20So, effectively, there's a monetary premium in all kinds of assets, real estate, art, things like that.
20:26And so, if you add that all up, you know, estimates vary, but it's, you know, hundreds of trillions of dollars.
20:32And so, if you look at it from that point of view, it's still early days.
20:37And if it does reach that kind of adoption, presumably, it becomes more stable.
20:44The adoption curve, you know, starts to saturate as it tops out.
20:49But there's a long distance between the capital that's been absorbed into Bitcoin today and that far future.
20:56So, I would say that, ultimately, this kind of strategy could absorb, you know, a significant proportion of the treasury reserve assets of even very catch-rich companies like Apple, Microsoft, Berkshire, Hathaway, and so forth.
21:10So, today, it's an early phenomena, and the market's still getting to grips with the concept of Bitcoin asset class and the concept of combining that with a public market company, with a sovereign wealth fund, with a pension fund, or individual investors, you know, using ETFs or advised by financial advisors.
21:28You're right.
21:28I think there's still much confusion around basic concepts, even like custody, securing your Bitcoin.
21:36So, how, in your opinion, will the industry, the world have to change to face that reality where we'll have virtually everyone on the Bitcoin standard?
21:47Yeah.
21:48I mean, there could be some analogies for people who are a bit older of the experience of the Internet coming about because I think within a period, about a decade, it went from companies being very suspicious about connecting to the Internet.
22:01They'd want to run an Internet, like an internal network, and, you know, within a decade, most companies had an Internet presence, and, of course, more recently, you know, smartphone apps and so on.
22:11So, I think that over time, you know, the world gets accustomed to new technology with a new advantage, and the ways to access it become easier to use, and people learn the concepts,
22:26and they look at other asset managers and other firms to see what they're doing, and they draw kind of inferences and confidence from, you know, other people's recommendations.
22:38So, it's not just BlackRock.
22:39There are more and more firms coming out with, you know, their model portfolio or their summary of the asset class position papers and things like that.
22:47So, I think there's a kind of, you know, new technology adoption curve, which often looks like that.
22:53Of course, we don't, you know, there aren't many technology adoption curves of this significance in history, so we may not necessarily have lived through one, right, because, you know, Internet's been around, mobile phones have been around, so we haven't had a recent one to think about.
23:09And AI, I guess, we were at the beginning of that, so that's an interesting example, and where that will lead, we don't know yet, I guess, right?
23:18So, I think Bitcoin has some of that phenomena about it, that it's a once in thousands of years evolution of a new money, a new hard money, and it's quite different to the current fiat money.
23:33Fiat money itself, of course, in our lifetimes, in our grandparents' lifetimes, that was there, but, you know, it's not that old on the arc of history, right, from the introduction of fractional reserve.
23:43So, we don't know quite where the kind of hard money assurances of Bitcoin as an improved gold and store of value technology is going to fit in terms of allocation versus fiat currencies.
23:59But it could bring about a different era of, you know, where companies and countries and individuals allocate to preserve their spending power.
24:11So, you're saying we're still early, but we are a world away from, say, the last bull market.
24:18And now that we have this universe of investment options from exchange traded products to funds to other funds to companies that invest in Bitcoin, do you feel that your role as a technologist and other technologists' role is increasingly shifting towards steering it as an investment asset rather than a technological innovation?
24:43I mean, I think it's both because, you know, part of the value proposition is for the parts of the world that are underbanked.
24:53So, you see a lot more day-to-day retail payment uses in emerging markets where many people don't have bank accounts or they don't have access to PayPal or they don't have government ID.
25:04And that is, you know, a surprisingly large percentage of the world's population still, say, for kind of remittance and local uses, that works.
25:13Whereas in the developed world, most people have payment apps, debit cards, credit cards, PayPal, anything they want.
25:21They have multiple choices.
25:22And it's, you know, it's a generally, has typically been a low enough inflation environment that people are really not cognizing of, you know, a euro or a US or a British pound or a Swiss franc inflation rate.
25:35They don't feel it.
25:36But I think they're starting to feel it in the COVID, post-COVID era where there's been sort of waves of quantitative easing and M2 monetary expansion.
25:47So, I think that has brought into focus that inflation is something that people in the developed world are starting to look for alternatives to address.
25:57When we talk about financial innovation for the developing economies, we increasingly talk about stable coins.
26:04And I don't think I've ever asked you what you think about stable coins.
26:08Yeah, I mean, I think the stable coin is effectively a more modern alternative to wire transfers that arose from the Bitcoin trading environments maybe a decade ago or something.
26:21So, I think part of the phenomena was that because Bitcoin was new and sort of a grassroots phenomena, the banks that were asked to provide banking service to the Bitcoin exchanges were suspicious.
26:33And so, it became difficult.
26:36So, there was inefficiency in the wire transfer process because they weren't able to get access to top-tier banks that, you know, a NASDAQ or something would have.
26:45And so, the stable coin emerged as a way to rapidly move dollars or euros between Bitcoin trading venues.
26:53And then, you know, over time, that became attractive to small businesses and individuals as a convenient, you know, low-friction way to move a small business wire transfer on a weekend or within an hour with, you know, kind of less friction, less paperwork, less process.
27:14So, I think it's starting to have, you know, remittance and wire transfer competition.
27:20It's also, you know, a big buyer of government bonds because they have to look to protect the, you know, the backing of the stable coins.
27:35So, particularly with Tether and Circle, they're big buyers of U.S. Treasuries.
27:40And I think Tether has now maybe $170 billion.
27:43So, it's getting up to the size where they have more treasuries than some major, more U.S. Treasuries than some major countries.
27:50So, it's an interesting phenomena because it's a new kind of business model.
27:57So, you're seeing sort of wider interest in introducing more stable coins into the market.
28:03How do they fit within the future you're envisioning for Bitcoin?
28:07Well, I think they are using a similar technology rail.
28:11So, for example, with Blockstream's Layer 2 Liquid, which is focused on, you know, transfers and share settlements.
28:18There is Tether stable coin on there.
28:20And so, that's actually convenient for sort of OTC trades because you can represent the dollar in the same network.
28:29And so, you can have smart contracts or sort of non-custodial trade settlement between a dollar proxy, being a Tether stable coin, and Bitcoin on Liquid.
28:40So, it's quite convenient to be able to interact with the dollar for trading purposes.
28:45And, of course, on Liquid, there are a lot of real-world assets like shares and corporate bonds, small business loans, promissory notes.
28:55And some of those assets are easier to trade against the dollar because they're dollar, you know, correlated assets, right?
29:04That's a corporate loan or something.
29:06Yeah, creating that ease of change further.
29:09What keeps you up at night about Bitcoin and has it changed from, say, the last bull market?
29:15Well, I think it's got more robust over time in terms of the technology.
29:22Technology is maturing, higher and higher quality assurance, better ease of use over time, more competition, more providers of technology.
29:33And, you know, over this third wave of ETFs and then treasury companies, you're seeing the interfaces between Bitcoin, the asset class,
29:43and the traditional financial rails coming, which is significantly, basically, the ETF wrappers.
29:49That is effectively a different way to interact with Bitcoin.
29:52So, it's a sort of bridge between Bitcoin, a physical asset, and the share and bond and ETF kind of interface.
30:00So, it makes it much easier, for example, to add Bitcoin into a portfolio, to have cross-collateral.
30:07So, I use Bitcoin as collateral for a Lombard loan, like a portfolio loan.
30:12So, it is sort of bringing Bitcoin into both worlds.
30:16So, historically, the Bitcoin trading environment has been on startup trading platforms, which were siloed from brokerage accounts and savings accounts.
30:30So, with the sort of combination and merger of those, you then get more efficient use of capital.
30:37And the traditional financial world is also starting to see Bitcoin as a good collateral asset for lending.
30:47Although volatile, it's 24 by 7 traded.
30:50It's extremely liquid.
30:51So, from that point of view, it makes a good collateral asset and you get improved liquidity by having all of the assets cross-marginable.
31:00Otherwise, you know, if you have a particular portfolio and you split it into two halves where you don't have cross-margin, it amplifies the risk.
31:08Lastly, I guess you've already shared your long-term predictions, but maybe you have some short-term ones.
31:14No, I mean, it's quite hard to predict Bitcoin in the short term.
31:17I think, you know, the adoption curve is going at a fast pace.
31:25We're in this third-wave era where you're seeing productization of Bitcoin within financial institutions.
31:33Many of the major financial institutions are in the process of developing the training materials,
31:39the procedures and processes to make Bitcoin products available to their clients,
31:43either inside mutual funds, managed products, or, you know, advised access to Bitcoin model portfolio recommendations.
31:52And so, you know, that is something that takes time for those processes to run through.
31:59But I think we haven't seen the impact of that in the market yet because it's still underway.
32:06Well, keep watching.
32:07Thank you for joining us, Adam.
32:09Thank you very much.
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